Through color images of road signs, abandoned factories, strip malls, and gas stations, Jeff Brouws documents a national identity. His personal interpretation of contemporary American culture asks a series of sociological questions. Beyond mere documentation, Brouws comments on the cycle of construction, destruction and regeneration.

Born in San Francisco, California in 1955, Brouws is a self-taught photographer. In his artist’s statement, Brouws writes that he “has combined anthropological inquiry and a bleak aesthetic beauty mining the overlooked, the obsolete, the mundane.” Brouws currently lives in upstate New York with his wife, Wendy Burton, who is also a Robert Klein Gallery photographer.

Monographs:

Approaching Nowhere, 2006

Readymades: American Roadside Artifacts, 2003

Inside the Life Reptile Tent: The Twilight World of the Carnival Midway, 2001